DECOLONIZING DIVERSITY? Decolonial reflection on diversity. Critical perspectives from intersectional-multiple-vulnerabilized positions
Diversity is often seen as an equality concept, inclusion policy or justice strategy. Diversity programmes promise to transform social and institutional spaces to make them more inclusive for historically marginalised groups. The overarching goal of diversity programmes should be the creation of sustainable physical and geopolitical diversity, which could become the norm in equality-oriented institutions as well as in hyper-diverse, post-migrant societies. Plural democracies, if committed to the strategy of diversity, must critique and challenge the bodily and geopolitical marginalisation of groups with low social power and take action to realise institutional diversity. Diversity must therefore ensure that the institutional affiliation of historically marginalised groups becomes the norm in the institutions of plural democracies.
Kritische Schriften der intersektionalen Ungleichheitsforschung problematisieren drei zentrale Bereiche, in denen Diversitätskonzepte und -programme zu kurz greifen und dringend überarbeitet werden müssen: 1) das Fehlen einer materialistisch-orientierten Perspektive, die sich auf Verteilungsgerechtigkeit bezieht; 2) das Fehlen einer dominanzkritischen, dekonstruktivistischen Perspektive von Diversität, die nicht nur Menschen, die von Differenz- und Hierarchieverhältnissen in Institutionen negativ betroffen sind, oberflächlich einbezieht (Fix the Excluded), sondern gerade die institutionellen Barrieren, die sie exkludiert explizit macht und transformiert (Fix the Institution); und 3) die fehlende Konkretisierung von Diversityarbeit sowohl in Bezug auf die Herstellung körperlicher als auch geopolitischer Diversität, was eine engere Verbindung zwischen diversitäts- und dekolonialitätsbezogenen Gerechtigkeitsstrategien erfordert.
Dieser Vortrag beginnt mit einer kritischen Perspektivierung auf Diversität anhand von Schriften der intersektionalen Ungleichheitsforschung, insbesondere von rassistisch marginalisierten Diversitätsforscher*innen und Diversity-Workers. Anschließend werden die Überarbeitungsrichtlinien, die aus einem dekolonial fundierten Verständnis von Diversität generiert werden, vorgestellt und diskutiert.
Texte:
- Ahmed, Sara (2012): On being included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham/London: Duke University Press.
- Bilge, Sirma. 2020. ‘We’ve Joined the Table, But We’re Still on the Menu’: Clickbaiting Diversity in Today’s University. In: John Solomos (ed.), The Routledge International Handbook on Contemporary Racisms (chap. 24, pp. 317- 331). Oxon: Routledge. Publié (P)
- Makhubela, Malose (2018): Decolonise, Don’t Diversify- Discounting Diversity in the South African Academe as a Tool for Ideological Pacification. In: Education As Change 22 (1): Volume 22 | Number 1 | 2018 | #2965 | 21 pages.
- Michaels, Benn W., 2006. The Trouble with Diversity: How we learned to love Identity and to ignore Inequality. New York: Holt
- ZDfm 1-2017 | Vielfältige Differenzlinien in der Diversitätsforschung, ZDfm – Zeitschrift für Diversitätsforschung und -management. Online: https://www.budrich-journals.de/index.php/zdfm/issue/view/2104
Short biography
She was Professor of Childhood and Difference (Diversity Studies) at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences from 2008 to 2022. Between 2014 and 2019 she was a visiting professor at the Humboldt University Berlin, at the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies. In 2020 - 2021 she was a visiting professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Women's and Gender Studies at TU Berlin. She was the first DiGENet Visiting Professor, Audre Lorde Chair for Intersectional Diversity Studies, Diversity and Gender Equality Network of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) 2021 - 2022. She was Visiting Professor for Intersectional Diversity Studies, as part of the Intersectional Black European Studies Project at ZIFG, TU Berlin from 2022 to 2024. She is currently a University Assistant at the Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Innsbruck (CGI) at the University of Innsbruck and Visiting Professor for Gender & Diversity at the University Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies (UZF*G), Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt.
She is the first spokesperson of the Regional Network East, in the Knowledge Network Racism Research, WinRa, BMBF (2022 - 2027). Since 2023, she has been Executive Officer in the Leadership Team on the Board of the transnational professional association "Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, ASWAD" based in the United States.
Her research focuses on diversity in educational materials in East and West Germany, sexual pedagogical empowerment for Black people and People-of-Colour in Germany, critical whiteness research, anti-Blackness, childhood research, intersectionality in the context of critical race theory and critique of racism.
She has been active in the Black feminist self-organisation Generation Adefra, Black Women* in Germany, since 1993. Together with Peggy Piesche and Katja Kinder, she was part of the scientific team Diversifying Matters, a specialist group of Generation Adefra, which carried out the Berlin consultation process "Making the discrimination situation and social resilience of people of African descent in Berlin visible" in 2018 and, building on this, drew up a catalogue of measures for the equality of Afro-diasporic people and the reduction of anti-Black racism, also on behalf of the Berlin Senate in 2021.
Rassismus, Rassismuskritik und Resilienz
Neue Ansätze der Zusammenarbeit zwischen Schwarzen, afrikanischen und afrodiasporischen Akteur*innen der Zivilgesellschaft und öffentlichen Verwaltungen durch die Implementierung der UN-Dekade für Menschen afrikanischer Herkunft 2015-2024
von Maisha M. Auma, Katja Kinder, Peggy Piesche
Organized by: CGI - Center Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Innsbruck
Contact: Julia.Tschggnall@uibk.ac.at
